Episode 75: Mariama Diallo, “Master”

OnWriting: A Podcast of the WGA East

Host Geri Cole talks to writer-director Mariama Diallo about the uncanny—and all-too-real—experience of navigating predominately white spaces as a Black woman, the complexities of identity, the importance and necessity of your community, and more.

Mariama Diallo is a writer and director whose short film “Hair Wolf” premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival—where it won the Short Film Jury Award—and was then released on HBO and the Criterion Channel. Diallo also co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in the short film “White Devil,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is a writer-director on the Peabody Award-winning HBO series RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS.

Her latest project—and feature debut—is MASTER, a supernatural horror film about three Black women striving to find their place at a prestigious New England university whose frosty elitism may disguise something more sinister.

The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and will arrive on Prime Video (and in select theaters) starting March 18.

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